Eternal Frost
by Kentra02
Summary: Short, Duo POV ficlet. Duo will always be cold, one way or another, even if it is only an ineternal cold.


Eternal Frost  
Duo POV ~angst~ ficlet  
  
I'm walking down an empty road, coming from nowhere, going nowhere. I've never really had anywhere to go in my life, not really. I never had a home, or parents, or a brother or sister, I never had the things that most children have. The streets were my home, my friends were my family, and the will to fight was my will to live. The only parental figures I had, the only ones I had to guide me, well, they're dead. Death has stolen away everyone I love. Maybe that's why I claim the name Shinigami, to fight death itself, to control it, to rule over it, so that I could love freely without the cold frost taking everybody from me.   
  
But by becoming Shinigami, I gave my body over to the cold, I sold my soul to the frost, and it's impossible for the cold to ever release me from its deathly grip. I've been cold my whole life, in one way or another, whether it was shivering while wrapped in a garbage bag for warmth, or touching the cold, lifeless flesh of someone that I loved. I'll always be cold and frozen, even if it's only internal.  
  
Now as I take each step down this snow covered back road, I'm still cold. The snow has penetrated my thin shoes and the stinging in my uncovered arms is hard to ignore. I could be inside right now; these days I do have a home, even if it is just a small apartment I got after the war. But it has heat. I could be warm right now, but only on the outside. So I walk out here in less than freezing temperatures wearing nothing but thin pants and a t-shirt, because some part of my insane mind knows that sometimes the cold is necessary. My senses need to feel the familiarity of the icy breeze. Everything is always so cold, grey, lifeless, it's hard to take with the wind numbing my skin, but the numbness helps.  
  
Numbing my skin helps me to numb my heart. Without that, my emotions would have consumed me by now, completely taken over. I wouldn't be able to live with myself. The emotion I allow to disguise my face is just pretend; feelings, anymore, just seem so insignificant. I have nobody to feel for, nobody to protect, no reason to fight. No reason to live. I've got less family now then every before. When I was still a kid, I had friends on L2, when I was a little older I had the other four pilots, even if they didn't speak enough to really be considered company. They were humans who had emotions, however hidden they were. Now... what have I got? All I have is a lonely apartment that nobody visits. Holidays have come and gone and the place remains cold and lifeless, with no sign that anybody ever received my invitations. I'm always being left in the dampness of the shadows, where darkness consumes every shred of innocence I've ever known.  
  
But I was never really innocent, even as a child. Childhood had no meaning to me except survival. Childhood wasn't a giddy sense of playfulness that little kids have. And the sad fact is, my body is still really that of a child at seventeen years old. A child on the outside, and a boy who was born an adult on the inside. To me, that is hard to accept.   
  
I shiver as the chilling wind throws my braid over my shoulder, yet I resist the urge to hug my arms around my freezing body. I must remember that I brought this upon myself, anyways. The cold is a drug that I have injected into my veins too many times; I'm so addicted now that I can't stop. I need to feel it now, I have to feel it, like an image that I can't tear my eyes from, like a never-ending song, like a lust that I can't deny.  
  
I reach to my forehead, without thinking, and feel the remains of a strange, foreign substance beneath my fingertips. I almost forgot, it's ash. It was so warm in that church today, so warm, but not warm enough to penetrate any deeper then my skin. I went to the noon service, I don't know why. I knew it was Ash Wednesday, and when I woke up this morning, I didn't intend on sitting through mass. It was just a chance that I passed that church, but I didn't go in to worship the God of Life. I don't believe in him. I went to live memories and show respect for people that I loved, people who were taken from me, people who _did_ believe in that God.  
  
I sat in silence at the end of the last pew, not singing with the congregation, knowing full well that I wasn't dressed for the place. I could feel their eyes on me; they knew that I didn't belong among them. When the ushers lead us up for the imposition of ashes, I wasn't going to go. I did not intend to leave my seat. But they silently guilted me with their eyes, all of them, with their darkened foreheads. So I went. I felt the priest's labored, callused fingers ride roughly across my skin, and felt the sign of the cross marked there. It didn't belong there, it didn't. It still doesn't. I don't believe in that God. But I could feel it as it burned into my face. The moment that I walked out of the church, I wiped it away with my fingertips, smearing it rather on my already tainted hands than on my seemingly innocent face. But the feeling on my forehead didn't leave.  
  
It's still burning now.  
  
But sooner or later, the cold will numb it, as it has done the rest of me, as it does time and time again. The cold is unforgiving and cruel, but I have no choice but to adhere to it, to submit my life to the Eternal Frost. 


End file.
